


like you imagined (when you were young)

by Nashira



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Immortal Merlin, Reincarnation, is arthur a cat? find out after this thrilling round of reading things that are barely edited, surprising lack of even implied sex given I wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 21:56:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5602483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nashira/pseuds/Nashira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes fifteen centuries for Morgana to come back, but remembering isn't a gentle act.</p>
            </blockquote>





	like you imagined (when you were young)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicincarnated](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=magicincarnated).



> a very belated christmas gift, from santa to @magicincarnated on tumblr ;)
> 
> I still don't bother asking people to read this nonsense for me to check for mistakes so, uh. Sorry. Love me anyway? ;)

Rounding the corner on the tube, she catches his eye. She can't be more than nineteen, with hair ironed straight and knee high boots that match her dark make up. His heart thunders in his chest and he runs into a woman who glares him all the way back to when he was a stumbling child, he mutters his apologies to the stranger and when he looks up, Morgana is gone.

 

\---

 

In his flat in Bath he sits, trying to convince himself it was just a dream but he thinks to himself he would know her in any lifetime, in any place.

Merlin searches for her day and night. Nothing.

 _Maybe she remembers_ , he wonders to himself. _Maybe she already knows and never wants to see me again._

 

\---

 

There's a man with black hair and blue eyes who keeps appearing at her favourite chip shop, he sits in the back corner at their one little table and only has tea and a few chips as his "meal". Strangely, she thinks she has seen him before but she's a busy young woman and doesn't have time for idiot men who don't know how to say so much as a _hello_ so she doesn't look at him as she grabs her usual order, a piece of battered fish and some chips, tosses the hot paper bundle into her backpack and hightails it back to her flat by the uni.

It happens again the next friday, and the one after that and she has to convince herself that it's just coincidence. After all, she got the same meal at the same shop every week, other people must do that too.

Only, it's always him and he's always looking at her. Even when he has his head down, she can oddly feel his eyes on her. What kind of freak was he?!

 

\---

 

It had taken him three years to find her again. An accident, or fate lending a hand. Merlin had been walking down the street in one long useless attempt to tire himself out when he heard her voice. It went through him like an electric shock. She laughed at some joke the server told her, smiled and took her dinner.

Watching her smile made his heart hurt.

He followed her, trying to stay out of sight and not alarm her. The last thing he needed was a high heel through his thigh but he couldn't help it. He had to know where she lived, where she went to school. He wanted to grab her and stare at her and say _I'm sorry_. Just that, no excuses about _need_ or _destiny_ or how badly _he_ felt as the blade had sunk in her. He wanted to ask her if she was okay, if she had her parents, if she was loved.

He didn't. Honestly, he wasn't even sure she remembered who she was, but she went to the same place every friday, and every friday he found himself eating chips that were too salty in a shop that stunk of fish and he didn't even care. It was the best place he had been in centuries.

Only... she started to notice he was there.

One friday, when she was clearly fed up with his nonsense, Merlin found him face to face with her, black handbag slammed on his table and nearly knocking over his tea.

'I don't know who you think you are but you can't stare at me every week for _months_ , if this wasn't a shop I'd think you were stalking me. Hell, you might be stalking me and just be really shitty at it.' she gets out, before he can even say _hello_ , or, _nice day, isn't it?_

He blinks at her and she glares at him, eyebrow raise as she leans on the table. She's twenty one now, her makeup is lighter, her face far more tired. She looks like she doesn't sleep much.

Most of all, she doesn't know who he is. And she wasn't wrong about him stalking her in the dumbest way ever.

'The chips here are great.' he lies, smiling easily at her. 'Why don't you sit down?'

'Yeah I'm going to sit down with the creep who keeps staring at me like he's Mary and I'm Gabriel.' she picked her bag up again. 'Cut it out.' she took her order and handbag and left.

Maybe she was better off on her own.

 

\---

 

Whatever had brought Morgana back had left Arthur among the dead, so Merlin had more time on his hands than he might like. He left a note with the chippy to give to her with her order, a letter telling her if she was ever in need of anything how she should contact him... but for a while at least he decided to leave her alone.

Seven months after that, he got a text message on the phone he owned but didn't actually use.

 

 

> **[Unknown Number]:** Why do I keep having strange dreams.
> 
> **[Unknown Number]:** You're always in them, but you look different.
> 
> **[Unknown Number]:** I look _different_.

There was a pause of several minutes, where Merlin starts to write out a response, pauses, deletes it and tries again. He's interrupted by another text, his phone dinging loudly in his hands.

 

 

> **[Unknown Number]:** You kill me in my dreams and I don't know why. It's not like you kept stalking me.

Giving up, he calls her.

'Hello?' she says, she sounds exhausted and breathless like she had been crying.

 'Strange dreams?' he asks, wondering at the fact she had even kept his information. He thinks she shrugs, judging by the sound of her sheets shuffling as she takes a long, slow breath and surely steels herself for the "nonsense" that is about to fall from her lips.

 'You killed me with a knife. You had a stupid scarf, and clothes like it was some bad BBC show.' she said softly. 'Once you poisoned me. You held me while I slowly suffocated because I couldn't move anything anymore.'

 'Yes.' he says, without meaning too. 'Morgana, _please_ let me c---' before he can finish, the line drops dead. She won't pick up the phone when he tries twice more.

 

\---

 

 _He knows my name_ , she thinks, pacing the floor of her apartment.

It's three in the morning, her phone in her hand set to silent as she ignores it vibrating against her palm. Sure, she had confronted him but _how_ could he know her name?

She falls asleep, face first in her sofa and her phone finally stops dancing along her palm.

 _Merlin!_ her mind repeats, again and again through her dreams. _Merlin_ Street, _Merlin's_ chip shop, the Tesco on _Merlin_ Lane. _Merlin, Merlin_ , _**MERLIN!**_

 

\---

 

A week later, it's her who calls and the first word from her lips is his name. She sounds like she hasn't slept in days, the way her voice quivers reminds him of how she had sounded wrapped tightly in her cloak and huddled by Gaius's table, begging for a potion that would work just this one time, please. A little relief. Just a night.

'Yes, Morgana. It's me.' he says and she cries against her phone out of relief, or horror that her dreams were right.

'Come here.' she says and tells him her flat's address, hanging up before he says yes or, are you sure?

He teleports there, meaning to wait an appropriate amount of time for him to have gotten here to knock on the door but she's sitting on the steps with a charred book in front of her and she senses him instantly, even though the dark.

'I set it on fire. With my brain. _I think._ ' by the look on her face, it's quite likely she thinks herself insane for saying that. Merlin sighs, moving over and taking the book from her hand. He intends to help her up but she launches herself at him, wrapping her arms around his body, burying her face in his shoulder. She was so frightened that she shook. She shook as this man she thought a stranger holds her in the dark outside of her flat, this man who somehow got to her almost instantly.

This man who killed her in her dreams, and somehow knew about it.

 

\---

 

The relief falls over her as he holds her. In her dreams he is terrifying, but here, now? He is someone who inexplicably understands what she's trying to say. He knows her name, her dreams... he knows how she burned her book.

Not normally one to cry, Morgana still finds herself sobbing in relief, stilling only when his eyes turn molten gold and out of thin air he makes a small horse dance across the table, woven out of light and air. She should be frightened, or maybe check herself into the mental ward but instead her tears stop and she stills but for a hand that reached for the horse.

It's not _real_ in that it isn't a physical creature but she can feel it pulsing along her skin, and he makes it prance from her hand up along her arm to her shoulder, only for it to nuzzle her hair before vanishing. It leaves only chills in it's wake... and her own magic jumping under her skin.

 

\---

 

He stays with her, sleeping on her sofa and making sure she's safe while she remembers. It's a slow process, watching a life time of memories come back and join her mind, the current memories straining against the weight of the old. Her temper comes and goes, but she could not hurt him even if she wanted too so it's mostly slammed doors and shouting in flashes when she remembers so clearly that the betrayals feel fresh and not fifteen centuries old.

Her cat growls at him if he lingers too close to her rooms, or she gets upset. It's a little orange tabby, and sometimes Merlin wonders if the universe didn't mess up and reincarnate Arthur as a cat.

When Morgana is ready, she no longer needs to be taught magic but she's lost centuries of practice and she cautiously lets him show her some of the things he has learned over the years. He thinks to himself that he's fifteen centuries too late to be schooling her, he should have tried this first, no matter how closely tied he felt to the dragon.

Or as Morgana calls it when he explains, 'That pissy lizard who should have stayed in it's hole.'

 

\---

 

Magic and Merlin and talk of dragons and her dead brother or no, Morgana finishes Uni with honours, she might as well after spending all that time in class.

She lets him stay and they eat far too much takeaway and she forces him to sit through a lot of cheesy movies and disney animations he was too busy being a lonely old man to get around to watching.

Arthur is not her cat. Arthur turns up at the park where they sit judging people while eating lunch on a saturday with ruffled hair and tight jeans and he's easily lured home by the dark haired, bright eyed couple that invited him to sit with them.

Maybe it'll work out this time.

Maybe for once the universe will be gentle and this will be their time, not their tragedy.


End file.
